Originally Posted by
reese
There have been some old articles and books that said Patti and Cindy sang together in the Ordettes before merging with Nona and Sarah who were with the Del Capris. But that's not the way Patti tells it. She wrote that Cindy came in to audition for the spot vacated by Sundray, singing IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU. Patti, Nona, and Sarah, as well as their manager Bernard Montague were impressed and that's how she joined the group.
Not long after that, Harold Robinson produced a record on the Starlets under the name "the Bluebelles": I SOLD MY HEART TO THE JUNKMAN. However, the Starlets were under contract to another label. Once JUNKMAN began hitting, Robinson needed a girl group to promote the record. Patti, Nona, Cindy, and Sarah came in, and Robinson felt Patti was "too dark and too plain," in her words. But when she sang, he changed his mind, even later renaming her Patti LaBelle, French for "the beautiful." At that point, the girls became the Bluebelles.
JUNKMAN became a Top 20 pop hit that the girls didn't even record [[although they later did their own version on their first album). Patti's name was added to the billing once the girls found out there was already another Bluebelles in the performers' union.
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